Hoteliers say industry faces crisis
Lab staff prohibited from carrying out tests during office hours
While the controversy over the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC) granting clearance certificates to hotel kitchens continue, and its Medical Laboratory Technicians (MLT) prohibited from testing ‘ hotel staff ’ during office hours, hoteliers complain that the decision has placed the entire hotel industry in jeopardy with no proper guidelines to follow.
Food hygiene managers of two leading star hotels in Colombo said that with the CMC not undertaking to carry out tests on the water, food and food handlers, the hotels are placed in a difficult situation to find reputed labs to carry out the tests.
The manager of a leading five star hotel expressed concern at the genuineness of the certificates issued by private labs and the possibility of staff obtaining bogus certificates to continue in service.
The manager of a leading five star hotel in Colombo said that he has around 200 food handlers on the staff and that he spends around Rs. 3.5 million every year on the tests. He said that it is important to have the tests done as per CMC regulations and to get the Sri Lanka Standards Institution ( SLSI) certificate for audit purposes. He said that out sourcing tests to private companies will be even more expensive and the certificates could not be relied on.
“There is no accountability from the labs concerned,” he added.
The concerns from the hoteliers comes in the wake of the CMC prohibiting its City Microbiological Laboratory ( CML) staff from carrying out tests on hotel workers during their (CML staffs’) office hours claiming that poor mothers and children are being deprived of their rightful service.
CMC Chief Medical Officer Dr. Ruwan Wijemuni said the CMC pathological department was opened for the poor people in the CMC area and that the service had to be discontinued as it interfered with the routine work of the MLT. He said that the lab operates already with a skel- eton staff and as such the tests done for hotel staff had to be stopped.
“We are 50% short staffed but we need to look into the welfare of the poor mothers who come here,” Dr. Wijemuni said.
It is learnt that the pathology unit of the CMC was issuing medical clearance certificates to hotel food handling staff for the last five years. In keeping with the CMC requirement hoteliers send their kitchen staff for testing for communicable diseases including typhoid, paratyphoid and hepatitis.
The CMC has worked out an arrangement for this extra service where the MLT staff was paid 35% of the income received from the hotel sector. However, beginning this year the CMC had made a decision to disallow its MLT to collect samples of blood from hotel staff or do pathological testing on blood samples during office hours, claiming that their priority lies with the public who come there for various blood tests.
Dr. Wijemuni reasons out that the staff end up receiving two payments from the CMC and if they wanted to continue to do the service they had to work after office hours.
Continuing to explain he said that the decision to discontinue the service was not a unilateral decision taken by him but a decision taken by the CMC Executive Steering Committee.
While refuting the claim that he had given a particular private laboratory to do the tests on the hotel staff he said that the hoteliers are allowed to have their medical clearance from any accredited private laboratory that is registered with the CMC.
He also said that it is not mandatory for hoteliers to have medical clearance certificates for food handling staff. He said that clearance certificates are given only once a year and diseases could crop up at any time during the year and as such the certificates issued become redundant. “There is no way of determining the food handlers’ state of health all the time,” he said. “The only important test is the stool culture test on kitchen staff who handles milk food,” he said.
Former Chief Medical Officer Dr. Pra- deep Kariyawasam countered Dr. Wijemuni’s statement and said that under the Food Act of the Health Ministry it is mandatory that food handlers be given clearance certificates depending on the prevalent epidemiological situation at that time.
He said that after testing, a certificate is issued clearing the person of prevalent communicable diseases including typhoid, paratyphoid and hepatitis.
Dr. Kariyawasam said that in 2012 there were around 10,000 food handlers in the island and two years later the number would have increased and if the CMC says tests are not mandatory the whole hotel industry will collapse.
Further, the food hygiene regulations of January 26, 2012 say that medical examination of a food handler should be carried out periodically as determined by the Medical Officer of Health (MOH) as clinically and epidemiologically indicative at that time. Similarly it is important to certify that water used in kitchens do not carry pathogens of any communicable diseases.